Here's where to find $6 billion to fund unemployment benefits

Republicans in Congress are willing to fund extended unemployment benefits if Democrats agree to cut around $6 billion from other parts of the budget to pay for it.

Fair enough.

Here's an idea: Take the approximately $3 billion in aid given to Israel, the approximately $2 billion given to Egypt, and another $1 billion given to various other countries for who knows what, and pay for unemployment benefits that way.

This way American citizens are getting their own money back.

Still, it has to be pointed out that cutting foreign aid will hurt American workers, since some of the funds aren’t given directly to other governments, but to American companies that produce weapons or other products that are then sent to these countries. Less foreign aid means fewer jobs for Americans.

So unfortunately, as members of Congress refuse to admit in public, and as many Americans are too dumb to figure out, there's no easy way of the budget mess. Fixing things will require both cutting spending and raising taxes - neither of which anyone, Congress or the public, wants to do.

What's wrong with hiring an unemployed person?

I'd like to hear from recruiters and hiring managers about why they won't even consider an application or resume from an unemployed person. It seems as though they don't care about bringing in the person who can best do the job and contribute to their organization. Instead they get hung up on silly things, like the length of unemployment. People can be unemployed for any number of reasons; it isn't automatically a given that they are lazy, not up-to-date on skills, or some sort of "low performer."

The most important question in any job interview is "What is your plan for doing this job effectively?" (Or for a profit, if it's in private industry). Anyone can talk about their past accomplishments. But what does that have to do with how they will perform in their next job? Past performance doesn't necessarily predict future performance.  Which is why length of unemployment should not be a consideration in the hiring process. Besides, does anyone stay in one job forever? Even your best candidates can leave a job - not only someone who is under-employed and looking for a better opportunity. Everyone is always looking for something better!

I'm not sure how hiring managers sleep at night, placing ads that state "only employed" need apply. So enlighten me, recruiters. What am I missing here?

My crazy job search/interviewing stories, part IV: Baruch College, Union County College, Hudson County College, Ramapo College

I must have wrote good resumes; people take 15 seconds or less to view a resume and decide if they want to interview the person. I did get a number of interviews. Although at colleges, most positions go to a candidate who will fill a quota, or to someone's friend.

Anyway, it could be me, maybe it's just the way the interview process works for other people. They feel it's appropriate to turn every answer that a candidate gives into a negative, like when I interviewed at Baruch College. If I'm such as awful candidate, why did you even call me in for an interview? The guy asking the questions looked more like an actor than the director of an office. Tall, dark, and handsome. Too bad he didn't seem to know much about interviewing.

The negativity continued at Union County College; I left thinking, why would anyone want to work at this place, surrounded by these miserable people?

An interview at Hudson County College found me listening to some guy on a power trip brag about his knowledge, and lecture about what he needed in an employee. Asking interview questions? I guess he forgot about that part.

At Ramapo College I walked into the conference room where the interview was held. I was told to sit at the end of a very long conference table. Odd thing was, the five people on the search committee sat at the other end of the table. Maybe they had a bad experience with other candidates? Did their clothes smell? Did they have bad breath? Maybe the interviewers wanted to see how a candidate reacted by this seating situation? If that's the case, what kind of reaction were they looking for? What would be a positive reaction? What type of reaction would be construed as negative? Or was it that the people doing the interviewing were just morons? Hmm, I think that might be it...

Crazy Job Search/Interviewing Stories, Part III

I was pretty targeted in my job search, and knew how to write an eye-catching resume, so I did land a decent number of interviews. Some of the bizarre stuff that happens during the interviews though...I couldn't have made some of it up if I had tried. Previously I wrote about the dude at Goldman Sachs who abruptly ran out the door during the interview, and the woman with the greasy palm who shook my hand at Seton Hall University Law School.

I also had an interview once at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. The first person I met with said, "If you get this job, you will not have very big shoes to fill." Hmm. That's good, I thought.  I did know the guy who held the job I had been applying for. I met him at a couple of conferences in years past and wasn't very impressed.

Anyway the first group interview went pretty well. One person said something odd, saying the student leaders were "seasoned." To me, a student leader is just someone who has attained a position of power. "seasoned" just isn't the word I would use to describe a college student who still has a lot to learn.

Then I met with two other people, a guy who talked about a business he had on the side from his college job, and the intramurals director who didn't look at me or ask me any questions. Weird. I tried to engage her but she just had this strange look on her face.

Later I met with a few upper level administrators and faculty members. Talk about goofballs. Two of the guys kept looking at each other while they talked in circles at me, never really asking me any direct questions. It seemed like they were totally unprepared and had never interviewed anyone in their life. Maybe they hadn't, who knows. A faculty member who slurred his speech, like he had been drinking, asked me a couple of odd questions. I politely answered, and asked my own questions, like it was a wonderful interview and I was glad to be there.  The chair of the search committee, a guy named Mark, was affable enough. Unfortunately he was only around at the start and end of the day.

I didn't get that job, and I heard that the person who did was only there for about a year. I guess they didn't pick the right person, unless it's okay to spend all that time searching for a worker who is going to be in a position for just a year. Seems like a big investment of everyone's time for something so short term. Why not just have two or three people interview the person over two or three hours? Who knows. American colleges are models of ineffective bureaucracies.

Why do bosses ask their workers to do this?

I’ve never understood why organizations ask their workers to do silly stuff that really has nothing to do with the kind of job a person can do, or has any relevance to the organization’s success.

 

Like expecting employees to attend various social events.  Why is this kind of thing so important?  Do you really need to feel liked by everyone in your organization?  Do you really think that camaraderie among people can be created? Not likely. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen naturally. You can’t force it to happen. A better idea would be to have several events that might appeal to large group of people within your organization. Going to a basketball game, volunteering at some kind of activity, or having a day at an amusement park for people with kids are better than expecting people to hang out at the bar after work, or expecting people to donate money so you can “celebrate” every single person’s birthday at the office.

Along those lines, what’s the point of “team-building” exercises? You don’t need to know about an employee’s private life. You do need to know how to help an employee improve their performance on the job.  When hiring a new worker, you need to know if they can do the job in an efficient manner. Asking them what kind of an animal they would like to be isn’t going to help you to determine that.

A person’s private life is considered private because they don’t want the whole world to know about it. Getting to know someone too well can make me want to work with them less, not more. Team-building activities can make people too uncomfortable to work together, not work well as a “team.”  Discuss performance and results, not inner demons.

Another question is, why ask certain people to do someone else’s job?  John has a project to do but hasn’t finished it, so you ask Tom to do it since you know it will get done on time. That’s wrong. If you’re going to do that you better pay Tom a bonus.  Come one, deal with John and let Tom do his own work.

Maybe a lot of these concepts came to be because certain people in organizations didn’t have enough to do, and they felt like they needed to justify their salary. ….

Long-winded bosses, asking employees to evaluate themselves and their peers, and other American job nonsense

Ever have a boss who asks you to keep them on track, then when they start droning on about nothing at a meeting and then when you signal them to stop, they ignore you? I would think I’m not the only one.  I guess whatever the boss was saying (I don’t remember anything of what they were talking about) was just too critical for them to say, that they couldn’t stop talking. Some people just need to make themselves feel important, I suppose.

Can anyone tell me what the point is of having workers evaluate themselves? How silly. Someone who is doing an excellent job is going to wonder why you, as a boss, don’t already know that. Someone who is doing a lousy job isn’t going to give themselves a poor rating, obviously (or not obviously to people who think these things up). Instead of self-evaluations why not ask workers what the organization can do to help them improve their skills – which would benefit the organization as well as the employee.

Maybe worse are “peer” evaluations. It doesn’t matter if the evaluations are confidential or not, who wants to work with someone who is critical of them? That’s hardly the best way to develop a “team first” attitude among your workers.

Does anyone have any proof that the above concepts actually do produce positive results in an organization, and I’m wrong? Let’s see it…

My crazy job search stories: Part I, Goldman Sachs

I’m sure lots of people have had strange experiences while searching for and interviewing for jobs. People who do the recruiting and interviewing of job candidates often have funny stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder though, if other people looking for a job have had anything similar to mine.
Once I went on an interview for a job as a college recruiter, with Goldman Sachs. This particular office was in lower Manhattan. The director of college recruiting was a guy named Mike. At the start of the interview he mused, “There’s mostly women working in college recruiting.” Hmm, maybe this gives me an edge, I thought. He didn’t ask me any questions though. He just rambled on for a couple of minutes about Goldman Sachs. Suddenly, he looked past me (his office was surrounded by windows).  He stood up, grabbed a stack of what look to be like tickets to a game or concert wrapped with elastic bands, and raced out the door. I turned around, but he had already fled down one of the hallways, disappearing from sight.

So I sat there for a few minutes, wondering what I should do. Wait until he comes back? Leave now? It started to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to get this job even if I stayed, so I was about to go when a girl named Kim walked in.

“Mike had to go, but I’ll finish the interview,” she said brightly. Then she proceeded to talk a little about the job. She didn’t ask me any questions, or ask if I had any questions about th position. She did talk at length about the bars in the area and how everyone in the department liked to go out for drinks after work.

After a few minutes she stood up and held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.  For some reason I said thank you, nice to meet you too, instead of saying what I really felt, which was, why did you even bother to call me in….

I’ve thought that maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If that’s the case, and I’m sure some interviewers consider that above all else (although they would never admit it), why not ask for a picture? A photograph with the resume on the back. It would save us all a lot of time and money. By looks, I mean beyond the blue suit/white shirt/red tie/polished shoes/clean shaven appearance.

Who knows. Maybe this isn’t as ridiculous as some others’ experiences. It feels like it was a waste of time and energy. On the other hand it’s given me something to write about, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Stay tuned for upcoming stories about job search…